June 3, 2007

A new biography, Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer by Chris Salewicz about the lead singer and lyricist for my all time favorite rock band, the Clash, has lots of fun fact on the leftwing icon. Joe stopped brushing his teeth at around age 16, causing them to eventually fall out, which helped him sound more proletarian, more like Andy Capp's dad, and less like the public school boy he actually was.

The Clash song "Bankrobber" explained:

My daddy was a bankrobberBut he never hurt nobodyHe just loved to live that wayAnd he loved to steal your money

Actually, Joe's father Ronald Mellor had been born in India and was a major in Britain's Indian Army during WWII. During the Cold War, he served in the Foreign Office. The future Joe Strummer (born John Mellor) grew up in Turkey, Mexico, and Malawi before being sent to boarding school in the Home Counties. Exactly what his diplomat father did at the embassies is a little vague, presumably because it was hush-hush, having to do with coded communications. Joe and his father had similar far left politics and and had similar personalities in some ways -- great talkers, angry and funny. The two weren't all that close, but Joe respected his father and Ronald was very proud of his son's success in the Clash.

One memorable detail of this endlessly detailed biography is that when Strummer's dad was stationed at the British embassy in Cairo, he lunched frequently with Graham Greene's old friend, master spy and arch-traitor Kim Philby.

Yes, Philby shows up in an enormous number of memoirs, novels, and films. For example, he's played by Billy Crudup in The Good Shepherd. His father was the famous India-born Arabist who converted to Islam.

Strummer's mouthful of rotten teeth probably explains his death by heart attack at a relatively early age, since gum disease and heart disease are highly correlated. By wanting to sound lower class, he also got lower class mortality.

I was about to say what Mangan said about Strummer's teeth and his heart attack. Yesterday I was reading the wiki entry about Cyril Kornbluth, author of 'the Marching Morons' who died at 34 from a heart attack, and it mentioned that he was noted for never brushing his teeth either.

If I were Shane MacGowan I would refuse to leave home without a defibrillation machine.

The country where everybody knows everybody else, and anyone who travels on business abroad is an informal intelligence agent, for he shares what he has learnt with everyone he knows at home -- that country has got to be Sweden. Which makes perfect sense for their small community.

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Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

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